Thursday, April 24, 2008

-Alex Frolov was screwed over once again, losing out on the nomination for the Lady Byng to the villainous Pavel Datsyuk, the perverse Martin St. Louis, and the flagitious Jason Pominville.* I already called bullshit on this so I won't repeat myself, but I'd like to say that I'm curious how people vote for the Lady Byng. Do they go to the stats sheet, see who averaged a point a game and then look for guys without high penalty totals? Or do they talk to the players on their beat and try to find out who the nice guys in the league are? I can't imagine someone actually agonizing over who to vote for; I'm assuming they just throw darts at a board.

*Thesaurus.com, baby.

-I'm officially cheering for the Sharks in the 2nd round. If the Stars lose, the Kings will pick #23 in the 1st round with Dallas' pick; if they win, the best the Kings can pick is 27. Go Thornton! Go Nabokov! Go Roe- okay, fuck Jeremy Roenick, but go everyone else. Oh, and sorry Matty.

-I wasn't going to post this earlier because it's just a rumor and I didn't think it was legitimate, but then I figured, "Who am I, James Bernstein?" So here you go, courtesy of Kingspipeline.com:

Thomas Hickey has been in LA getting some sort of surgery. None of the guys know for sure what the surgery is on but it does not have anything to do with the concussions at seasons end. Three of the guys I talk with all believe it is some sort of foot or ankle injury. This would explain why it took so long for Hickey to get back on the ice after he was cleared from his concussion.If this is true, good thing he's getting taken care of it now. Hickey's one of my guys to watch at training camp; I think he could potentially jump over the plethora of 23 year-old defensemen the Kings have to grab maybe a 5 or 6 spot next year. Either that or he's going to be a complete bust and we'll all curse Dean Lombardi's name for not taking Jakub Voracek, Karl Alzner or Sam Gagner. Either way.

-ESPN.com rated teams in terms of fan happiness in a completely scientific and in no way arbitrary way and the Ducks finished 1st. That makes sense: from my experience, retarded people are usually very happy all the time. The Kings finished 29th, proving that we can't finish dead last in anything.

Cheech, I don't think your fanbase's neuroses and my fanbase's bitterness and self-loathing will mesh well, but we'll just have to make due for this series. We'll try not to spill beer on you.

Oh, and I've now heard 3 people criticize Ovechkin for passing in game 7: EJ Hradek, Barry Melrose, and John Buccigross. All 3 work for ESPN. I think someone's a little upset that they didn't get to milk the WAS/PIT match-up...